Custodians of the Land — 1996 ·

Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania

Edited by Gregory H. Maddox, James L. Giblin, and Isaria N. Kimambo

“Custodians of the Land goes a long way in helping us define and delimit African environmental history; it offers a full range of empirical evidence as well as a wide range of interpretive possibilities. This book successfully sets a coherent agenda for other national historiographies and strongly attests to the quality of scholarship in the field.”

James C. McCann — Agricultural History

Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history.

In his conclusion, Isaria N. Kimambo, a founding father of Tanzanian history, reflects on the efforts of successive historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history.

He shows that nationalist and Marxist historians of Tanzanian history, understandably preoccupied through the first quarter-century of the country's post-colonial history with the impact of imperialism and capitalism on East Africa, tended to overlook the initiatives taken by rural societies to transform themselves.

Yet there is good reason for historians to think about the causes of change and innovation in the rural communities of Tanzania, because farming and pastoral people have constantly changed as they adjusted to shifting environmental conditions.

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Gregory H. Maddox is a professor of history at Texas Southern University and author of Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History and coauthor of Praticing History in Central Tanzania: Writing, Memory, and Performance.

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James L. Giblin is an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

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Isaria N. Kimambo is Professor of History at the University of Dar es Salaam.